ISIS Rejects Pope’s Interpretation of Their Own Religion

In a move that should be shocking to precisely no one, the Islamic State has issued a critique of Pope Francis’ recent denial that the violence they perpetrate is justified by the Islamic religion:

In the most recent issue of Dabiq, the propaganda magazine of the Islamic State, ISIS criticizes Pope Francis for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror are economically motivated.

“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”

The Islamic State directly attacks Francis for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence,” saying that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”

“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord,” it reads.

“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’”

The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s description of recent acts of Islamic terror as “senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing senseless about it.

“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,” they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian West is absolute and implacable.

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah [tax for infidels]and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.

I tweeted about this last month, when Francis called the beheading of Fr. Hamel “absurd”:

Last year, I wrote about the Islamic State’s ambitions for the Vatican, and how the bureaucrats in Rome had better wake up:

In what is an ongoing frustration for many Catholics, the Vatican continues to insist on friendly relations with Islam. It started with Nostra Aetate #3 and Lumen Gentium #16, neither of which are particularly compatible with what the saints previously said about Islam. Since the Second Vatican Council, this innovative understanding of a religion Catholic thinkers like Belloc have characterized as a “great heresy” continues to spiral. In Evangelii Gaudium #253, Pope Francis asserts that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” More recently, there has been common prayer in the Vatican gardens (where the imam went off-script and used subversive, anti-Trinitarian language in Arabic).

Meanwhile various Islamic groups have been talking about conquering Rome.

[…]

It’s time for Catholics — and especially our leaders in Rome — to wake up. These militants intended to target Pope Benedict in 2010; some believe that Pope Francis may be an even bigger target today.

We are called to love our enemies. This is why the message in the video we posted earlier this week is so powerful. But we must also be honest enough to call our enemies enemies.

Catholics have sought the conversion of Muslims for fourteen centuries. But they have also fought them with arms. The reason Europe is not under Sharia law (yet) today is because of the valiant armies that marched under the banner of the Cross, who won critical battles against Islamic armies at Lepanto, at Malta, at Zenta, at Vienna, and more. The Spanish fought Islamic invasion in their own country for eight hundred years. Islam is a religion that spreads, assimilates, and consumes. If it is not resisted, it conquers. The very word “Islam” itself means “submission.”

When your house is broken into in the middle of the night by a man who has been publicly proclaiming that he’s going to come in and kill you and your family, it might not be in your best interest to attempt “dialogue” with him once he’s already inside. Still, if you feel that it’s important to talk him out of doing something stupid, your side of the conversation is going to be a lot more persuasive if you’re pointing a loaded gun.

I don’t know if Francis is aware, but there’s no charism of the papal office that makes a pope infallible when it comes to his interpretation of another religion. When it comes to a toss-up between listening to the people who are actual, Koran-carrying Muslims from the Middle East vs. a Modernist Jesuit in Rome who doesn’t even understand his own religious teachings, I’m going to go with those closer to the source.

Islam is supremacist ideology writ large: they will convert you, conquer (and subjugate) you, or kill you. Whatever it takes. But they will never tolerate you being anything other than a Muslim. We need to get that through our heads. They’re telling us out loud, in public. We just have to listen.

5 comments on “ISIS Rejects Pope’s Interpretation of Their Own Religion”

Someone has egg on their face. That someone would be totally unconcerned about that.
I would never say something good about ISIS, they are a thoroughly evil organisation, however, even they see that our Pope is pronouncing rubbish!

This will change nothing. The Pope and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the rest will continue to assume that they know the Qur’an and Islam better than the Islamic State does, and that at its core it teaches peace, and that ISIS, for all its ostentation in Islamic observance, somehow misunderstands or disregards that. The idea that any of them should pick up a Qur’an and read it for themselves and see whether what the Islamic State is saying is true — inconceivable!

Dada and Surrealism may have outlived their welcome in Parisian salons, but they have found a warm welcome on Papal planes, and at the Vatican itself. The Pope has yet again delivered himself of more of his no-longer-surprising, but always disturbing, comments on Islam. He has said in the past that Islam is a “religion of peace” and that “Islam has nothing to do with violence.” Last month at a press conference he finally recognized that there is indeed a “war” going on in the world, “but it’s a real war, not a religious war. It’s a war of interests, a war for money. A war for natural resources and for the dominion of the peoples.” That war, not a war mandated by the Qur’an, but a war that has nothing to do with Islam, is what the Pope insists is roiling the world today. It can’t possibly have anything to do with religion, for “every religion wants peace,” said a Pope who has chosen to forget centuries of religious warfare, between Protestant and Catholic, in Europe, and to overlook more than 1,400 years of religious warfare between Muslim and Christian, Muslim and Jew, Muslim and Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist.

How does he know that Islam is peaceful? Oh, he just knows. And he had a private meeting in May, a little “dialogue” where, as he put it, “the meeting is the message,” with Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, who assured him that Islam was as peaceful as all get out. No one in the Pope’s retinue brought up some of Al-Tayeb’s less soothing statements, such as this remark about Jews: “Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. This is a cause of great distress for the Muslims.” Al-Tayeb has also claimed that Jews consider non-Jews to be “extremely inferior” and that Jews “practice a terrible hierarchy, and they are not ashamed to admit it, because it is written in the Torah – with regard to killing, enslavement, and so on.”

These remarks are all part of the public record, located by a quick google click. But perhaps the Pope should have focused on Al-Tayeb’s remark that “the Quran said it and history has proven it: ‘You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.’” The “polytheists” in question are the Christians, especially the Catholic Christians, guilty of “shirk” (which deserves death in Muslim theology), that is, polytheism, because they believe in the Holy Trinity, which in the Muslim view ascribes “partners” to God. Most Christians, of course, do not think of Christianity as polytheistic, but it’s the Muslim view that matters here, and the Qur’anic injunction upon which it is based.

Reporters on the plane flying back to Rome from Warsaw asked the Pope why he never uses the world “Islam” to describe terrorism or other violence.

“It’s not right to identify Islam with violence. It’s not right and it’s not true,” he replied.

“I don’t like to talk of Islamic violence because every day, when I go through the newspapers, I see violence,” the pope said, in apparent reference to news of crime in the predominantly Catholic country of Italy.

“And these are baptized Catholics. If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence.”

So let’s try to get this straight. If, for example, a man in Milan kills his wife in a crime of passion, or a robber shoots a jeweler in Palermo, according to the Pope these are examples of “Catholic violence,” and the Pope feels that if he speaks “of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence.” This is nonsense. The scope and scale of Islamic violence, over 1,400 years, leading to tens of millions of victims all over the world, are completely different in kind from the intra-family or criminal violence which the Pope wants us to believe proves that Catholic violence must be mentioned in the same breath as Islamic violence. The jihadists of Charlie Hebdo, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the kosher market, Bataclan, Amsterdam, Madrid, London, and of course New York and Washington, were not acting in violation of Islamic norms but according to them, in furtherance of them, whereas the “baptized Catholics” who kill their wives or a jeweler during a robbery are violating Christian norms.

The clearest Islamic response to the Pope’s insistence that there is no such thing as a “war of religion,” that the war in question is, “like all wars” — in the Pope’s unwaveringly Marxist analysis — a war over resources of all kinds (natural resources, land, money, subjugation of peoples), is that which has just appeared in the 15th number of Dabiq, the magazine of the Islamic State. It is one long scream of hatred against Christians, the “arrogant disbelievers,” including by name Pope Francis, calling on Muslims to “pray for Allah’s curse to be upon the liars.” “Break your crosses” these Christians are urged, give up Christianity and embrace Islam:

“[Christians] have the option of trying to cling to the transient luxuries of this life, rejecting the truth in favour of either paying jizyah [tax] to the Islamic State or continuing to wage a futile war against it.

“Alternatively, they can heed the warning of Allah that the worldly life is not guaranteed even for those who pursue it at the expense of their salvation, and thus choose to embrace Islam, champion the truth, attain the mercy of their Lord, and enter the Gardens of Paradise.”

The article also warns those in the West that they will be “crushed” by the Islamic State, and the “war against Islam will neither succeed nor benefit you. You will fail because you fight against those who have allied with Allah.”And Dabiq foresees attacks all across Europe in this fight that will end in Islam’s complete victory.

It continues: “Do you claim that Jews and Christians follow the right religion and that they will enter the kingdom of heaven? There is no proof for this.” ISIS-inspired massacres in the US, including those in Orlando and San Bernardino, were committed, according to Dabiq, by Muslim “knights.” calling those who carried out the killings “knights”. One ISIS fighter – a convert from Christianity – encourages others to “follow the example of the lions in France and Belgium, the example of the blessed couple in California, and the examples of the knights in Orlando and Nice.”

Thomas Williams has described Dabiq’s frontal assault on Pope Francis:

“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the Dabiq authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”

The Islamic State attacks Pope Francis by name for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence” –what he thought conciliatory, Dabiq finds offensive — for “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.” I wonder if this reaction will confuse the Pope still further.

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”

“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord,” it reads.

“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’”

The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s description of recent acts of Islamic terror as “senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing senseless about it.

“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,” they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian West is absolute and implacable.

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah [tax for infidels] and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.”

Has Pope Francis been shown any of this? What would it take for him to grasp its significance, and not try to find ways to dismiss it? Is he aware of how many Muslims, of every income and educational level, all over the world, have, despite great obstacles, managed to join ISIS, first in Iraq and Syria, then in Libya, and most recently, to become “knights” of ISIS in the West, committing their acts of mass murder and suicide in Europe so as to “strike terror in the hearts” of the Infidel enemy?

ISIS may be a “sick and twisted ideology” to non-Muslims trying to exculpate Islam itself, but it looks to many Muslims a lot like a particularly violent but doctrinally orthodox version of Sunni Islam, with the same Qur’an that all Muslims read, without any dilution of its message, or any nuance of niceness to please or fool non-Muslims. The Pope, instead of offering up his knee-jerk tu-quoque view that all religions are the same (Islam is peaceful, Islam has nothing to do with violence, the real Islam has nothing to do with terrorism) should set himself a course of study, beginning with the Western scholars of Islam of the non-apologetic school, such as C. Snouck Hurgronje, Henri Lammens, Samuel Zwemer, Joseph Schacht, and others who wrote during the century, roughly 1870 to 1970, before the Great Inhibition set in. That would enlighten him more than any meeting with Al-Tayeb. He owes it to his flock – he’s still their shepherd – not to lead them astray.

His recent comment that “if I speak of Islamic violence I have to speak of Catholic violence” inspired one exasperated Frenchman to create the hashtag @HaussmannParis #PasMonPape which translates as “#not my Pope.” It’s the top trending hashtag in France, and in Belgium too. The Pope better watch out. By their hashtags shall ye know them.

At first I tried to laugh off Pope Francis’ remarks about Islamic violence, during the in-flight interview following World Youth Day in Poland. These comments were made in response to a question raised by Antoine Marie Izoarde of i.Media: “Why do you, when you speak of these violent events, always speak of terrorists, but never of Islam, never use the word Islam?”

The Pope, like a great many political leaders, prefers to classify violence in the name of Islam as the work of an insignificant minority which does not properly represent Islam, stressing the desire to forge ties with the far larger group of Muslims that is at least open to cordial relationships with people of other religions, and with non-Islamic governments. That approach Is not necessarily bad as a matter of diplomacy; indeed, it has much to recommend it. Obviously, anyone seeking peace with another group will avoid lumping those who are open to good relations together with those who are not. With respect to the latter, the goal is to bypass them, rendering them irrelevant.

A problem arises only when we create a mythology to support our diplomacy. With respect to Islamic violence, this mythology is usually based on two falsehoods: First, that Islam does not, in fact, sanction violence against “infidels”, including terrorism; and, second, that the violence associated with Islam is simply the violence characteristic of every religion’s fundamentalist wing.

It is not only that these falsehoods perpetrate their own sort of abstract violence against the truth. They also have extraordinarily damaging consequences.

Violence

The Koran does in fact sanction violence against infidels, even if it is possible to prefer other passages which speak of peace. Islam also envisions theocracy as the ideal form of government, insisting that what we call the State be governed according to Islamic religious law. This means government must grant only a restricted status to those who do not embrace Islam, and must severely punish (often with death) those who convert away from Islam, show insufficient respect for Muhammed, or attempt to convert Muslims to any other religion.

It is estimated that between five and ten percent of all Muslims believe that Islam commands violence against infidels. As a friend recently pointed out, that’s fifty to one hundred million people! And Islam also sanctions the violence of men against women, which is a kind of terrorism in itself.

The Koran claims to be the direct dictation of God, which must be taken as it stands, without any interpretive problems. But as I have pointed out elsewhere (see And what is Islam, anyway? in 2013 and The meaning of Islam, and the deeper problem we must face earlier this year), there is no authority principle in Islam. This means that when faced with a variety of texts, nobody can say definitively exactly what Islam is or what attitude toward infidels it requires. How Islam is to be lived can be known only sociologically (in exactly the way Modernists attempt to describe Catholicism). Why should we not try to move the sociological data toward tolerance and peace?

These considerations suggest that, on the question of sanctioning violence, the danger for Christians comes from a willful self-deception which can occur when we insist that the policy we choose to follow actually represents not what we are hoping to achieve, but present reality. In Patrick Henry’s famous words, if gentleman cry “Peace, Peace” and there is no peace, then what we end up with is appeasing a powerful enemy while he destroys more and more livelihoods and lives—without mentioning the ravages of the various forms of domestic violence generally justified in Islam.

Fundamentalism

But in the secular West, the second falsehood is likely to be more broadly damaging—the lie that all religions, including Catholicism, tend to produce violent fundamentalisms. It is bad enough that Pope Francis said he prefers not to speak of Islamic terrorism because bad Christians are also guilty of violent crimes, using the example of a man killing his girlfriend. The comparison of violent crime committed in rejection of religious principles with terrorism inspired by religious principles is ludicrous. But it is even worse to say the following:

There are violent persons of this religion…this is true: I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them. When fundamentalism comes to kill, it can kill with the language—the Apostle James says this, not me—and even with a knife, no? [in answer to question cited above]

Never mind equating incautious speech with physical violence and terrorism (St. James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship, using this metaphor to emphasize its power and highlight the damage it can do; he nowhere equates hurtful speech to brutal murder). But the more important question is this: By what stretch of the imagination does anyone equate violence with “fundamentalism”? This is verbal sleight-of-hand popularized by secular commentators who seek to paint a principled defense of the natural law as “fundamentalist”—as something rejected by reasonable Christians, just as violence is rejected by reasonable Muslims. This use of “fundamentalism” was deliberately developed to portray serious Christians—those who refuse to accept the secular values which Catholicism teaches to be false—as ugly, narrow, distorted, bigoted…and dangerous.

There have certainly been unbalanced people who have done bizarre things in the name of every religion, our own included. But I defy anyone to point to a significant movement of any kind that justifies and programmatically perpetrates violence against non-combatants based on the principles of Catholicism (or has ever done so). And even if such a movement could be found, I defy anyone to demonstrate that it arose through any sort of “fundamentalism” (whatever that means) in interpreting Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.

No. This is just another example of the reflexive adoption of popular secular language to smear those who take Christianity seriously. It is exactly the sort of speech that undermines the Petrine ministry. Our Lord prayed for Peter so that he could confirm his brothers in their faith (Lk 22:32), not so that he could throw them under the bus.

Of course, we can fight these distortions in our discussions and our use of the media. But this problem runs very deep in the current papacy. It is a kind of abandonment, and it is outside our control. It challenges us to imitate St. Paul, rejoicing in our sufferings so that in our own flesh we may “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24).

So if you are a Catholic who pays close attention to fundamentals, please take note: This is what we do.